Archive for the ‘Rant’ Category.
2009-02-02, 21:22
Prior to some recent business travel, we had amassed a collection of documents to read and analyze on the road. One of those documents was a recent report issued by the CVCA who have delivered some startling news about the status of VC activity in Canada;
- Venture capital investment in the US has increased by 17%, from 0.18% to 0.21% of GDP
- Venture capital investment in Canada has decreased by 35%, from 0.13% to 0.085% of GDP
- And investment by Canadian funds in Canada has decreased from 0.10% to 0.060% of GDP, a 40% drop.
Continue reading ‘Whither Goest Venture Money?’ »
2009-01-16, 15:05
There are many reasons that SOHO and home networks are lagging so far behind the technological capabilities of the underlying hardware. Significantly that industry has been over burdened with a lack of commitment to standards (or most likely a proliferation of differing, partially implemented draft standards), complex installation processes, poorly implemented interoperability and a general lack of support for the ongoing operation of a SOHO network.
Continue reading ‘Mamma Don’t Want No Network Manager’ »
2009-01-15, 07:54
Last winter, after the mountain of snow that fell on Bleak House, SWMBO decided to try wintering in sunny Florida. So last week we went down to drop her off at the appointed location and set up the telecom technology. It was a no-brainer compared to our historical experience in TGWN
Continue reading ‘How Easy Is That?’ »
2009-01-05, 05:47
We have traveled to numerous communications conferences over the years and have observed both the good and the badly managed. Given the recent economic downturn it will be interesting to observe what happens to the main conferences scheduled for 2009. There will no doubt be increasing pressure on you to ensure you are attending only those top profile, high quality events. In that light we’ve gone out of our way to establish a measure of conference success.
Continue reading ‘Industry Conference Success Ratio’ »
2008-12-22, 21:27
Recently we had company in from England and given our regular busy schedules we thought it might be civil of us to arrange to get them a prepaid mobile to use here while with us. We had some experience in using prepaid in England and Europe.
There the process was downright simple and cheap;
Continue reading ‘Prepaid Piracy’ »
2008-12-16, 23:04
In London, the most over-monitored city in this sector of the galaxy, BT has announced today it will proceed with behavior targeted ads at its broadband user community. We have been following this service trial (called Webwise) over the past year and were interested in seeing the final outcome.
Continue reading ‘BT’s Big Brother Ads Will Go Live.’ »
2008-12-15, 09:08
About a year and a half ago we switched from our long term carrier to an alternative provider. We did so because we were constantly frustrated by errors on the bills, electronic bills which were routinely late or not available (sorry sir, we’ve had problems with our website,… sorry sir, you will have to call the website technical support…ad nauseum) and finally the frustration of dealing with a call center that did not have a clue about service, but were good at staying on a script.
Seems like these complaints are still about. We just noticed a posting by Dick Waugh over at the Owen Sound Sun Times which is all too familiar to many of us. We feel your pain.
Customer Care—is anybody out there? Does anybody really care? Press 3 to get stuffed!
2008-12-12, 16:27
Dear Palm Treo 680,
It’s over. It’s you not me!
I was a loyal Palm user for over 10 years. I’ve owned the following Palm products;
- Pilot 1000,
- Palm III,
- Palm IIIx,
- Palm Tungsten E,
- Palm Treo 650, and a
- Palm Treo 680.
I loved you long
I was a dyed-in-the-wool user and probably caused dozens of my friends to buy Palms when they were the only real PDA on the block. No, I’ve used other PDAs but really liked the Palm OS and they way they operated seamlessly with my desktop. I also appreciated the flood of third party applications which were well priced and for the most part worked flawlessly. Relationships change, however…
Continue reading ‘Treo—Bye-o’ »
2008-12-03, 09:48
Over at Michael Geist’s blog (its on our must read list) he commented on Canada being a spam haven. Having read his particular blog a number of times we felt it necessary to comment. We think he’s on the mark when it comes to suggesting that Canada needs stronger spam laws but may be off the mark in concluding that Canada is a spammers delight.
Continue reading ‘Spammers In Great White North?’ »
2008-11-25, 22:34
A recent story by The Alternative Assets Network highlighted just how bad it is for both VC’s and their potential investments. Canadian venture investment in companies is falling to very low levels. With a 26% year over year drop in Q3 as measured against 2007 (a very low investment year also) it has to be concerning to fund managers and start ups in general. With about $1B raised to date this year it is off last year by 33%.
Bert Hill over at the Ottawa Citizen reiterated the bleakness of the situation in an article he wrote.
Continue reading ‘No VC $ For You’ »
Prior to some recent business travel, we had amassed a collection of documents to read and analyze on the road. One of those documents was a recent report issued by the CVCA who have delivered some startling news about the status of VC activity in Canada;
